


How Sharp

by Uncertainty_Principle



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, At least not right away, Ben Parker Dies, But mostly angst, Dissociation, Gen, Grief, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt/Comfort, Mourning, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Tony isn't a great father figure, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, and some humor, be safe, but really just a lot of angst, read the tags, tw: self-harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:28:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29522262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uncertainty_Principle/pseuds/Uncertainty_Principle
Summary: The mugger only fired one shot. The bullet must have scraped him when his uncle pushed him out of the way, right before it hit Ben square in the chest. Amidst the other blood, he did not notice.There’s no blood now. The skin around the scrape is tight and itchy. A scab has formed. It’s already healing.Ben is dead. And it’s only after the fact that Peter discovers he might be invincible.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Ben Parker, Peter Parker & May Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 45
Kudos: 225





	How Sharp

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, who ordered the angst? No one? My mistake. Please take this one on the house.
> 
> TW for self-harm and dissociation. I promise there's a happy ending, but do what you need to do to stay safe. Love you.

The bullet grazes him.

He doesn’t notice, not in the moment. From the second the gun goes off until several hours later, when he is wrapped in a scratchy blanket in the sickly light of a police station hallway and May comes bursting through the doors at one end, dressed in rumpled scrubs, her eyes puffed from previously-shed tears but dry now, Peter’s memory is… jumbled. There’s a lot of light, red and blue and orange, and a lot of dark, and sound and silence, and all these things have pitched around in his brain until they’re fused together, a sticky conglomerate of events he can’t quite remember and wishes he could forget. Standing out among them, only two things are clear: the feeling of blood oozing between his useless fingers; his uncle, whispering words Peter will hold onto forever, and never repeat.

It’s not until the hallway, not until May spots him and comes running over, and kneels down in front of him, and grips him by the shoulders while she stares into his face like the proof of him is somewhere deep past what can be seen with just a glance, that Peter feels a twinge of pain. Later, after she has claimed the body and driven him home and sat on the couch with him, holding him, crying into his hair while he cries into her chest, after they have both exhausted all the grief they can manage for one night and she has steered him toward the bathroom to wash what remains of his uncle away in the shower—only then does Peter peel off the shirt they gave him at the precinct and see the shallow gash in the skin above his deltoid. The mugger only fired one shot. The bullet must have scraped him when his uncle pushed him out of the way, right before it hit Ben square in the chest. Amidst the other blood, he did not notice. 

There’s no blood now. The skin around the scrape is tight and itchy. A scab has formed. It’s already healing.

Ben is dead. And it’s only after the fact that Peter discovers he might be invincible. 

* * *

It takes a long time, though, for him to test that theory. It takes long nights of lying awake listening to May cry, knowing she probably thinks he can’t hear her, except now Peter can hear everything. It takes reconsideration of his powers, which were why he was out that night in the first place. It takes a commitment, to never let the same thing happen to anyone else, as long as he can help it. A commitment to responsibility. It takes a dozen failed web formulas, innumerable falls from unreal heights, being punched in the face by enough criminals to fill Yankee Stadium, and dodging more knife-swipes than he would tell May about if he lives to be a hundred and four. 

It takes, too, the appearance of Tony Stark in his apartment one afternoon, six months after the shooting, winking and lying and threatening to tell May about Spider-Man if Peter doesn’t fight with him in Germany. Germany, where Peter takes a giant fist right to the sternum and blacks out for just a second and then wakes up and tells Mr. Stark that he’s fine, ready to get back up and fight, and when he goes to make good on that promise discovers he has broken at least half of his ribs. 

Like the graze the night of the shooting, it’s a revelation slow in coming. Not the fact that his ribs are broken—no, God, that much he can tell the moment he tries to roll off the pavement and is shoved back down by a metal-encased hand instead. The revelation comes later, when he is back in his hotel room, prodding his bruised side, which is already starting to feel better, and realizing that despite the cars and the falls and the fists and the nearly-missed knives, this is the first time he has been injured since the night Ben got shot. Apparently, a two-ton backhand is what it takes to get him these days. A two-ton backhand—or a two-inch bullet. 

That night, at least, it’s only a thought, one that barely even registers as Peter shimmies out of his new suit and sets the pain aside in favor of the restless excitement that has been simmering non-stop since he first saw Mr. Stark on their living room sofa. He’s bouncing off the walls even now, so the thought is there for just a second, then gone again, carried away on waves of adrenaline:

_I wonder what else can hurt me?_

* * *

Two months later, Peter lifts three tons of concrete off his own back, crashes a plane on a beach, and nearly burns to death saving the man who caused it all from an explosion fueled by alien weaponry. In all of this, the worst injury he sustains is the one on his shoulder, where Toomes dug a metal claw deep into flesh and muscle. Peter drags himself home that night and just barely musters the energy to cover the oozing wound with a wad of gauze, just so he doesn’t bleed all over the bedsheets, and then he sleeps it off. By morning the wound has closed. A week later he has full range of motion back in his arm. 

It doesn’t even leave a scar.

* * *

By all accounts, this is when things should get better. 

Yes, Liz is gone and Toomes is in jail and Peter turned down the Avengers and he wonders all the time if it was the right decision, if he can really help more people on the ground or if he’s just being a coward, and Mr. Stark is still intimidating and school is still hard and Ben is still gone and sometimes all of that is so big Peter will find himself holding his breath, like he can hold the guilt out by refusing to take in any part of the outside world, even air. But beyond these things—the bad things, the guilty things—everything else has gotten better. Mr. Stark gave him his suit back. Happy has stopped treating him like a nuisance little kid. May knows about Spider-Man, and even that is good. Though the initial blowback was terrible, her knowing has become a relief—he is glad to not have to lie to her all the time, to keep sneaking around behind her back. Especially since, in all other arenas, May seems to be getting better too. He no longer wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of her stifling tears. She laughs more. Goes out with her friends. 

It’s been ten months since Ben died. The scar from the bullet wound was gone within a few days. Apparently, the scar of losing him has started to fade too. For May, anyway. And for everyone else. No more nods from the teachers when he has to duck out of class to gather himself in the bathroom on the days when it hits him like a fist to the gut, no more sympathy from classmates he barely knows. Even Ned stopped asking about it months ago. And Mr. Stark never knew.

It’s this last one that is probably strangest. Iron Man has been Peter’s hero for… well, forever. He’s been obsessed since he was a little kid, triply so since Ben took him to the Stark Expo when he was seven, though if Ben were still around he would probably remember that trip with a little less fondness than Peter. Ben might never have been the Iron Man fan Peter is, but, as with all of Peter’s obsessions, he was as supportive as it was possible to be. Bought him merchandise when they could afford it. Listened whenever Peter got into one of his-blow-by-blows of the latest Avengers-related news. Peter can’t count the number of times he’s imagined how Ben would react to the fact that he has not only _met_ Tony Stark but is kind-of sort-of his colleague. Or mentee. Or whatever. 

But Mr. Stark probably doesn’t even know Ben existed. 

He doesn’t know why it bothers him so much, this fact, but it does. It eats at him, weirdly more as the time since the Homecoming incident stretches on and Mr. Stark becomes—if not exactly available, at least more friendly. Peter’s rescue of the plane conclusively landed him back on Mr. Stark’s good side; the Avengers invite was evidence of that. 

“Do you think Ben would have liked Mr. Stark?”

He realizes how odd the question must sound only after he has blurted it out. Especially because he has just asked Ned, who, across the table in the crowded cafeteria, pauses midway through a bite of what the school calls chili, looking vaguely frightened by the question.

“Um,” he says, “yeah, I guess. Everyone liked Ben. But uh, why do you ask? I mean, Ben happened before—”

“Before Mr. Stark.” Peter feels stupid for having brought it up. “Yeah I know. Forget it.”

“No, I didn’t mean like…,” Ned trails off, fidgets. “I guess I just kind of thought you were, like, over it. Not that you should be over it! Or that it’s even something you should ever get over! It’s just with all the Sp—I mean, with your _internship_ ” —he glances over his shoulder conspicuously— “it just seemed like you were getting better.”

“I am. I’m fine. Sorry, it was just random. Forget I said anything.”

But Ned still looks uncomfortable. 

“I thought Mr. Stark was being cool,” he says. “Since the whole Liz’s dad thing. I thought you two were tight.”

“He is. We are.” 

“Then… why don’t you ask him?”

Peter catches himself just before he laughs, realizing at the last second that Ned isn’t joking. He turns the laugh into a cough and says, “Yeah man. Good idea. Hey, are you gonna finish that? My metabolism is all over the place.” And then ignores the tightness in his stomach when Ned yanks his plate away and, clearly relieved, changes the subject.

* * *

Peter’s near-laugh was because of this: Peter and Mr. Stark are _not_ tight. Even months after their first meeting, and now weeks since the Toomes incident, Peter can count the number of times he and Mr. Stark have been together when neither of them is wearing a suit on one hand. Just two fingers, actually: first, the day they met in his bedroom. Second, the day at the compound, when he turned down the Avengers gig. And that’s it. 

_Spider-Man_ and Mr. Stark, on the other hand… 

“Yo, kid.” Mr. Stark’s voice, pinging through Karen’s comm system unannounced, makes Peter jump, as it always does. “You busy?”

“Woah.” Peter scrambles for purchase on the wall he was in the middle of climbing. “Hey—hey Mr. Stark. Nope, not busy. What’s up?”

He can hear the forced casualness in his own voice, but he’s still not used to this—the direct calls from Mr. Stark, not preempted by any major disaster of Peter’s causing. Mr. Stark doesn’t mention it.

“Yeah,” he says, “have I mentioned lately that I hate New York?”

“Aw, come on,” says Peter. “Sure, there’s monsters and stuff, but can you beat the pizza?”

“Fair point.” There’s a faint rush of air in the background on Mr. Stark’s end. He’s definitely in the suit. “Speaking of monsters—got time to help with this one?”

Peter has been calling up the location on Karen’s internal display since the second he answered the phone. He’s already swinging toward the harbor, watching the news report in the corner of his eye—some dude with mechanical arms, ripping apart a merchant vessel with gusto while Iron Man swoops around him—when he says, “Then pizza after, right?”

“If you can make it here double-time, kid, I’ll buy you an entire Sbarro.”

“We were talking about _good_ pizza, Mr. Stark.”

But he swings faster all the same. 

* * *

Make no mistake: Peter likes doing this. 

He likes that Mr. Stark calls him personally now. He likes that he doesn’t just call him in on petty stuff, but on the real things too, like eight-armed robo-villains tearing up cargo ships. He likes that about half of the time, when Mr. Stark makes these calls, he’s there on-scene himself, fighting alongside Peter. 

What Peter doesn’t like is when it’s all over. 

Three hours, twelve shipping containers, two terrified sailors and innumerable swipes from mechanical claws have passed before Peter manages to rip out the motor for the guy’s robot arms and web him up. The guy is ranting— _he’s going to take over the world!_ —while a team of FBI agents unsticks him from the corrugated metal to which he’s webbed, but Peter, already inured to the insane fare of supervillainy, isn’t listening. He’s making his way over to the other side of the dock, where Mr. Stark, helmet off, is pouring water out of one of his boots.

“Next time you chuck me in the Hudson, a heads-up would be nice.”

Peter would feel chastened were it not for the fact that Mr. Stark is only half-grimacing as he wipes dirty river water out of his face, and when he lifts his head, he flashes Peter a grin. One Peter returns, though Mr. Stark can’t see it; they’re too close to the dock to risk taking off the mask, even though Mr. Stark has chosen a narrow row between containers to discreetly dry off. 

“I was choosing between that and another hit from the death ray,” Peter says, offering his arm when Mr. Stark reaches out to steady himself while he removes the other boot. “I thought that thing was waterproof?”

“That _thing_ is your suit’s grandpa, so show it some respect. It’s also a rotten piece of junk that’s going straight _back_ in the Hudson as soon as I’m out of it. Concentrated energy raygun bull…” He is muttering to himself while he hops around, tugging at the suit’s manual releases. Then he suddenly looks up. “Lemme ask you something, pipsqueak” —Peter tilts his head, indignant— “I mean mansqueak. Give me a break here, I’m half river sludge. Lemme ask you something, _Spidey_. When am I going to get some good baddies? Mine are all ray guns and mech armor… meanwhile Thor’s off-world, probably fighting dragons or unicorns or… all I’m saying is, where’s my unicorn? Where’s my dragon? Aha!”

Mr. Stark has finally managed to grasp the manual release. He lets go of Peter’s arm while the armor clatters to the deck all around them. 

“Amateur hour,” he says, kicking the breastplate. 

“All my bad guys are like, bank robbers and kitten snatchers,” says Peter. “I’ll swap anytime.”

“Tempting. But don’t act like that was a skip through the roses for you either, kid. I saw you taking hits out there. You all good?”

There’s real concern in Mr. Stark’s voice now, his face. Peter is glad he kept the mask on. It hides his flushed cheeks. 

“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, I’m good. Fine. Just a few claws to the face, no death ray. Takes a lot more to, you know, do any damage.”

“Braggart.” Mr. Stark sweeps his eyes over Peter then nods once, seemingly satisfied. “If that thing damaged the suit… you really are unsquishable, aren’t you?”

Peter laughs nervously, even though an uncomfortable memory has just arisen: of that night in the hotel in Germany, the unbidden question: What _can_ hurt him?

He doesn’t know why the question makes him feel suddenly nervous. But before he can answer, Mr. Stark’s watch—which really is waterproof—beeps. A second later a new suit is barreling out of the sky toward them, closing around him. Just before the faceplate shuts, Mr. Stark says, “You okay to swing home there, Spider-Kid? I’ve got a date with some nanotech.” And before Peter has a chance to reply, Mr. Stark is blasting off, muttering something that sounds like, “Death ray my ass,” as he does.

Peter watches until the Iron Man suit is nothing but a glowing speck in the distant sky. 

“Guess that’s a no on pizza, then.”

He swings home.

* * *

It really does start out as a test. 

He’s conscious—really—that what he’s doing is a little crazy. He knows it from the moment he finds himself standing on the roof of a five-story building, toes curled over the edge… not exactly an unusual scenario, except for the fact that today, he isn’t wearing his suit. 

He’s not an idiot (really), so he has his web-shooters, and he’s wearing one of the masks from the pre-Mr. Stark days as well. It’s not that he doesn’t want _protection_ , it’s just that he doesn’t want it in the form of Mr. Stark, swooping down out of the sky, demanding to know what the hell is wrong with him. Because nothing is wrong with him. There are _reasons_ to know this stuff. Knowing his limits, knowing when he should and shouldn’t jump into a fight—the more data he has for these things, the safer he’s going to be, right? This is in the name of science.

It just doesn’t feel so sciency when his toes edge out over the ledge.

He knows, logically, five stories isn’t going to kill him. He’s caught speeding cars, chucked them off to the side, then leapt back into the air all in the space of a breath, all without earning himself a scratch. Work out the math (and Peter has, actually, done the math—because this really, really is just an experiment) and a fall like this should be nothing. Less than nothing. 

Yet looking down he feels a swirl of vertigo unlike he’s felt since the first time he went web slinging, uncertain, on the first leap, if his web formula would hold. But the math didn’t lie then. It isn’t going to lie now. Not unless physics has somehow changed in the last year. And he has his web shooters, if he chickens out halfway through, so really—what’s the worst that could happen?

As soon as Peter thinks it, he has a flash—brief but vivid—of _the worst that could happen_. And he almost doesn’t do it.

But at that same moment his leg gives a weird little spasm, and Peter falls.

He’s only in the air long enough to cry out. Just long enough to reach, on instinct, for the button that activates the web shooters. Just long enough not to do it. 

Peter hits the cement in the alley below and immediately tucks into a roll. He’s on his feet almost as soon as he lands, breathing hard, adrenaline thrumming hot and heavy through his veins—but otherwise, totally unharmed. 

“Holy shit,” he says. He looks at his hands, unblemished. He looks up at the roof from which he just fell, so high up he has to crane his neck all the way back just to see it. 

He realizes he is grinning maniacally. 

He does not think too hard about the twitch that took him off the edge. Because if he does, he may have to decide whether or not he did it on purpose.

* * *

Seven stories doesn’t get him either. Nor does ten. At fifteen, Peter starts to suspect that anything short of terminal velocity will be like falling out of bed, but he stops himself from testing that theory, partly because there is no building outside of Manhattan that will get him there—and he doesn’t want to swan dive into the middle of Times Square without a villain on his tail as an excuse—and also because that would be crazy. And this isn’t crazy. This is data.

(And if collecting that data gives him a sharp thrill in the pit of his stomach, if that thrill is sometimes exhilaration and sometimes guilt and more often both, and if he finds, each time he does it, that he walks away craving the next time he can, that is merely a side-effect. Barely even worth recording.)

* * *

The first time he decides to do a “test” in the field isn’t really a decision.

It’s an armed robbery. These are kind of Peter’s specialty, outside of the occasional bigger baddie sent to him by Mr. Stark: just dangerous enough to require outside intervention; not dangerous enough to warrant the attention of one of the big names, like Iron Man. Outside of helping old ladies cross the street, these are Peter’s favorite type of Spider-Man activity: he likes the thrill of dodging bullets, the clean efficiency of his spider-sense, the flush of pride when he gets everyone out safe. But this time he is on the scene late: by the time he swings in, dropping down amidst the shattered glass of the bank’s front windows, the robbers are already out the door, leaping into an armored truck that looks more like a tank. 

Peter tears off after them, honed in on the truck as it swerves through traffic, attuned to the little jerks and stutters the driver makes before taking a turn, so even though they lose the cops he is two steps ahead of them. He launches himself down a backstreet a half second before the truck turns that way as well, and as a result finds himself ahead of the robbers instead of behind. 

Normally, he’d react differently. Web slinging and super-strength actually require a bit of speedy calculation _most_ of the time, though admittedly a lot of it is instinctive by now. Best way to take out a speeding truck? Come at it sideways, or, if that is not available, divert the force diagonally, so his body isn’t taking the full impact head-on. It’s not just instinct: it’s good common sense.

And yet this afternoon, Peter does the precise opposite. When the van comes screeching around the corner then straightens, gaining speed, Peter just—drops down out of the sky. Directly in front of it.

He sticks his arms out only at the last second, only because his self-preservation instinct isn’t so far gone that he’s gonna take a truck straight to the chest—and the reinforced front bumper folds like rice paper around his outstretched hands. He feels the concrete fold and bunch beneath his feet as he skids back. The truck grinds to a halt, the three men in the front slamming against their seatbelts. 

And Peter is utterly unharmed.

* * *

“Dude,” he says to Ned, whispering in the back of Spanish the next day. “I think I might be invincible.”

“Says the guy who whined on my couch for like, three hours last weekend because he was hungry.”

“No, I don’t mean literally. I mean virtually.”

“Aren’t we all _virtually_ invincible? I mean, when you think about it, life is such a miracle— _lo siento, Señora._ ”

The teacher has just thrown them a silencing look. They wait a second then continue, speaking even more quietly.

“I’m being serious, Ned. It’s a whole thing. Remember the plane crash?”

“Uh, yeah, how could I forget? I was the one who made it possible. And if I recall correctly, you weren’t exactly doing backflips the next day, Peter.”

“But I was ok, right? Like, who can do that? Who can just get flung from a plane and— _sí, Señora, discúlpame_ ”—he lowers his voice so it is virtually inaudible— “and just walk away?”

“Uh, Spider-Man, I guess. Is this a flex? Cuz like, I know superpowers are cool and all that, but sometimes you push the limits of my own superhuman supportiveness, you know.”

“Yeah. You’re right. Sorry. I just—”

“I mean it’s cool, dude, but you’re being a little weird about it. Just, I don’t know, don’t go flinging yourself in front of any trains or whatever. In case your totally-plausible _invincibility_ theory is wrong, you know. If you think I won’t kill you if you die before the robotics competition, you are incorrect.”

“I—”

But Peter doesn’t get to finish, because the teacher decides this moment would be an excellent one for him do do an impromptu presentation on why speaking in class is _maleducado_.

* * *

But as coincidence would have it, Peter does step in front of a train—just the next week, in fact. It’s not just recklessness—the train is actually out of control—but it does produce the same thrill as the leaps from rooftops. He is sore that night, but barely. It’s muscle strain, not bruising. Lying in bed that night, stretching his arms, he finds himself wishing, unbidden, that the train had been going faster. Like a bullet train, maybe. _That_ , he thinks, _would have been a real test_. 

There is a jolt of something behind his navel then, some small manifestation of an emotion he can’t quite name. It’s sharp and unpleasant, makes another sharpness rise behind his eyes—tears, he realizes only when he feels the wetness on his cheeks. He swipes at them, angry with himself, but if anything this seems to make the tears come faster, heavier. After a moment he is full-on crying, stuffing his fist in his mouth to stop the little sobs that are rising up in his throat so that May, asleep in the next room, will not hear him. With his other hand he grips his shoulder, unconscious that he is doing so.

 _I’m invincible,_ he thinks, and he cries even harder. 

His phone pings. 

Peter scrambles to pick it up, desperate for anything to distract him from whatever the hell is making him behave like this. 

**Mr. Stark:** _Hey, Long-Johns, wanna cool it with the head-on collisions? Seeing you get smacked by a train on the 9 o’clock news isn’t my idea of a grand time._

Peter stares at the text for a long time before he comprehends it. Mr. Stark has never texted him before. At least, not without needing something from Spider-Man. With shaking fingers, he types a reply.

**Peter Parker:** _Sorry, Mr. S. Kinda a split-second decision. But don’t worry. Didn’t even leave a mark_ 💪🏼

A pause, long enough Peter thinks that might be it. Then:

**Mr. Stark:** _Impressive._

**_Mr. Stark is typing..._ **

**Mr. Stark:** _Don’t do it again._

Peter waits again, in case there’s more. But this time that really does seem to be it. 

He rolls over, still confused, but realizing as he does that he is no longer crying. He also realizes he knows, suddenly, what the feeling was: it was fear. 

_What do I have to be afraid of?_ he thinks. _Nothing can hurt me._

It’s only hours later, when he’s stopped fiddling with his phone and is, finally, drifting off toward sleep, that Peter gets an answer, arriving so close to the edge of unconsciousness that he won’t even remember it the next morning.

Peter is afraid of himself.

* * *

Even without that thought sitting at the forefront of his mind, Peter wakes the next morning with resolve: no more experimenting. He knows what he needs to know, can act within his own limits. Enough is enough. The next time he has to stop a speeding train or dodge a flying fist, he’s going to do just that—he’s going to dodge. Or come at it sideways. Or do any of the smart things he _used_ to do, before this whole experiment started. And as if the text from Mr. Stark and the slight fear, which he does still remember, weren’t enough, May intercepts him as he’s walking through the kitchen that morning, grabbing a granola bar to eat on his way to school.

“Hey you,” she says, and Peter freezes when he hears the strange intonation, a lowering of her voice that he associates with being in trouble. She must have seen the train on the news too. Steeling himself, he turns around. 

May is standing by the kitchen island, clutching a mug of coffee, still in her pajamas. For just a second Peter is bemused, wondering why she isn’t already dressed—and then he remembers. It’s been hovering in the back of his mind for months, in fact, but he hasn’t had the space to think about it, what with Spider-Man and Mr. Stark and all that’s been happening… but as soon as he does remember he knows, suddenly and unequivocally, that he does not want to deal with it.

“Um,” he says sheepishly. “Hi.”

“Are you going to school?” May isn’t crying, not at the moment, but her voice is still hoarse from it. “I already called you in, I thought we were gonna have a day.”

“I…” Peter casts around, the desperate urge to flee waging battle with his mounting guilt. “I meant to tell you, I can’t miss today. Ned and I, we—we’re working on the robotics thing. It’s due on Monday, we can’t really afford to take a day off.”

May seems to battle with herself for a moment while she takes this in. Her knuckles go white around the mug; she swallows a few times. 

“Can you take the night off, at least? I really wanted to spend some time with you today, honey.”

Peter wants to say no. He wants it so badly he actually aches from it, because if there was ever a night he needed to feel like Spider-Man and _not_ like Peter Parker, it is tonight. But he knows from the tremble in May’s voice that he can’t.

“Yeah,” he says, “of course.”

* * *

By the time school is halfway through, Peter is almost wishing he’d just stayed home. His classes are not the distraction he needs. Since May called him in, every single one of his teachers knows the significance of the day: every single one of them wants to know what he is doing there. The sympathy—which spreads like seismic waves throughout the day, out from the epicenter of the teacher’s lounge—is almost certainly worse than whatever May had planned for them. And yet the closer the clock creeps to three pm, the deeper the dread in the pit of Peter’s stomach becomes. 

Just before eighth period begins, he pulls Ned aside.

“Hey Ned,” he says, “what d’you think about staying late to work on the circuit board today? I still think we can improve the RPM if we go in again—”

“I’m tutoring tonight,” says Ned, cutting across him. He is frowning, looking concerned. “Anyway, don’t you think you should be home tonight, man? Isn’t May—?”

“Forget it,” Peter snaps, and he stalks off to class, leaving a bemused and hurt-looking Ned in his wake. 

By the time eighth period is over, Peter is practically panicking. He would do almost anything to hop the fence and go out as Spider-Man; if it weren’t for the fact that he will almost certainly end up on the news in one form or another if he does so is about the only thing stopping him. 

As the bell rings, he comes up with a desperate, last-ditch attempt at an excuse, one he certainly wouldn’t have thought of (okay, he might have thought about it, might have thought about it _a lot_ since the Vulture, but he would never have _done it_ ) if the situation weren’t so dire, and if the man himself hadn’t done the same thing last night:

He texts Mr. Stark.

**Peter Parker:** _Hey Mr. S. You in the city?_

To Peter’s great surprise, Mr. Stark texts back almost immediately.

**Mr. Stark:** _Depends which city you mean. New York isn’t the only one. You’d know that if you’d ever been above 32nd._

Heart hammering with treacherous hope, Peter replies:

**Peter Parker:** _Why would I do that when everything cool is on the other side? Namely me._

 **Mr. Stark:** _Oh, I see why you’re texting me. Your head’s gotten too big for the mask. Well sorry kid, you’ve run out of free punches on the suit-update card. Next one is gonna cost you._

 **Peter Parker:** _So that’s a no on being in New York?_

 **Mr. Stark:** _If you’re shooting off pithy texts while bleeding to death in an alley somewhere, you better tell me so I can come finish the job. Otherwise spit it out, Parker._

 **Peter Parker:** _No blood. Just have a thing. Was wondering if you could help?_

There is no reply for a moment, and Peter immediately begins to panic.

**Peter Parker:** _Not an emergency!_

 **Peter Parker:** _it’s a robotics thing._

 **Peter Parker:** _more specifically, a robotics club thing._

 **Peter Parker:** _nvm, it’s stupid. Not a big deal. Have a good night!_ 😗

 **Peter Parker:** _oh god that was supposed to be a smiley face_

 **Peter Parker:** _you can come kill me now if you want_

**_Mr. Stark is typing…_ **

**Mr. Stark:** _Yeah, sorry, homework is a little three decades ago for my taste. But lots of kisses to you too._

Peter feels his lip quivering as he stares down at his phone, but he bites the tears back. Shuts the phone off, and stuffs it in his backpack.

With nothing left to do, he heads home.

* * *

“Surprise!”

Peter freezes mid-step, only halfway into the apartment, poised in the act of taking off his backpack. He was hoping to squeeze past May into his room for a few minutes, to gather himself before the inevitable night of tears and grief he was expecting. What he was _not_ expecting was to find May in the kitchen, wearing an apron splattered with tomato sauce, holding a slightly-burnt lasagna and beaming like she has just won _Master Chef_. Its so discordant to what Peter was expecting that he just stands in the doorway, gaping.

“I know I’m not the best cook,” says May, setting the pan down on the countertop, “but I didn’t think I was bad enough to literally render you speechless. Are you gonna let all the warm air out, bug-eyes, or are you coming in?”

Slowly, Peter shuts the door behind him, lowers his backpack to the ground. Steps closer to the kitchen, even though he is still battling the instinct to run away. 

“Sorry,” he says. “I, uh, just wasn’t expecting… this?”

May is taking off the oven mitts, lifting her apron over her head. 

“I’ve been thinking about it all day,” she says. “And I just don’t think he’d want us to be sad anymore, you know? It’s been… _such_ a year, Pete, and so much has happened, and I just can’t see him wanting that for us anymore, you know? We’ve been sad long enough so” —she gestures around the kitchen— “I thought, what if we celebrated him instead? No more crying just… his favorite things. He liked my lasagna. He was crazy for it, but he did. And then I thought we could watch his old movies, look at pictures… I don’t know, just the things we haven’t let ourselves do for so long. I’m just tired of being sad. Aren’t you?”

“No.”

Peter says it sharply, and without meaning to. Still, May’s smile falls as abruptly as if he’d slapped her.

“No, I’m—” Desperately, Peter tries to backtrack. “I didn’t mean that. I meant—I meant—I can’t, tonight. Not tonight. I have—I have the robotics thing. I have—”

May’s demeanor changes in an instant. Her shoulders draw up around her ears. She tosses the oven mitts onto the counter, hard enough that they bounce off immediately, onto the floor, but she doesn’t bend to pick them up. 

Peter snaps his mouth shut as she stalks around the kitchen counter, into the living room, and toward her bedroom.

“Fine,” she says. “Do whatever you want, Peter. You always do.”

And, without looking at him, she slams her bedroom door behind her.

* * *

Back in his own bedroom, Peter tosses his backpack onto his bed, just barely managing to stop himself short of chucking it through the drywall. He drags his hands over his face, through his hair. He’s hyperventilating, but he barely notices any of this. All his focus is on how badly he wants to take out his suit and get out of here, swing across the city and never stop swinging, to get as far away from this apartment and this fucking night as he possibly can. The only thing stopping him is how much worse he will make things if he does.

Instead of leaving, therefore, Peter snatches his backpack off the bed and yanks the circuit board he and Ned have been working on all week out of it. He stomps over to his desk and drops down, rummaging through his drawers until he finds his Xacto knife, aware that he is probably making a ton of noise but not caring. Through the thin wall that separates their rooms, he can hear that May is blasting a Nora Jones album—the one she and Ben played at their wedding. 

All at once, Peter is furious. He jabs violently at the circuit board, slicing wires, knowing somewhere under his white-hot rage that he is ruining it and not caring at all, not even a little bit, because he raging, fuming at the injustice of it all, that he should even have to feel like this after all this time and everything that has happened. Slice. He is furious at May for forcing this on him, for not even _asking_ if he wanted to have a trip down memory lane, which he _absolutely did not._ Slice. He’s furious at Ned for not staying after school to work on the stupid circuit board. Slice. He’s furious at Mr. Stark for only texting him when he needs Spider-Man, for making him feel like an idiot for even thinking he might want to spend time with him outside of the suit, as though he’s some sort of mentor and not Iron Man, too busy to worry about the stupid life of one stupid kid. Slice. And most of all he’s furious at _himself_ , because it’s such a small thing, isn’t it, such a little thing just one person dying, one person in the whole world and people die every day, he’s seen it, he sees it all the time, he _stops_ it all the time, but he couldn’t stop this, this one tiny thing _he didn’t stop it, he didn’t stop his uncle from dying—_

Peter freezes. Somehow in the course of destroying the circuit board, the Xacto knife has moved from the criss-crossed wires up to his wrist. It hovers there now, poised just above the flesh, ready to press down and the visceral part of him is screaming at him to pull it away, put it down and walk away. But some other part of him—some part that is not visceral, that seems in fact to be _outside_ him says, _But I thought you were invincible?_

All at once, Peter is awash in calm. With this calm, a clarity.

Peter can take big hits. Big hits are easy. They are what he understands. They are what _everyone_ understands, the kind of danger that is perfectly suited to superheroes, the reason Mr. Stark calls him in to handle the stuff the cops can’t. The reason guys like him exist. It’s the little stuff, the stuff happening under the surface and in back alleys, the stuff that never gets noticed because it is so minor and so commonplace that to everyone except the person it is happening to, it has become mundane— _that_ is the stuff that does the most damage. Like the edge of a blade, sharpened to just a few atoms wide, force concentrated into the space of a hair. 

Ben dying was a little thing. A few atoms, winking out of existence. And yet he still can’t stop it from feeling like he died a little that night, too.

He finally understands. It’s not about how hard something hits. It’s not about how big.

It’s about how sharp. 

Peter feels it when the blade goes in. Not pain. He feels, instead, the difference in consistencies between skin and muscle as the point of the Xacto knife slides through one and into the other—can almost hear a noise like a balloon popping when it happens, though of course that’s in his head. He takes a short, sharp breath, never looking away, considering the sight of metal in flesh with all the impassivity of a scientist observing an experiment, one he has performed over and over again. 

Then blood begins to well around the blade. 

Peter drops back into his body with a jolt, and the instant he does, all sensation arrives with him. Pain, panic—and immediate, boiling shame. 

What did he just do?

Before he can think better of it, Peter pulls the knife back out.

He quickly recognizes this for the mistake it is. Now blood is not oozing up around the knife—it is gushing, pouring out of the wound at a speed and volume that should not be possible from such a tiny cut, and which makes Peter instantly aware that he has severed something important. He claps a hand over it, tears in his eyes, more from the embarrassment and panic than from pain, and blood rises up between his fingers, pours down his arm.

“Shit,” he says. “Oh shit. Fuck. _Fuck_.” 

He scrambles to his feet, knocking his chair over. His room is a disaster. He can’t remember where he put his first aid kit. Of course there is the big one in the kitchen but there is no way he is going out there, no way he is going to risk letting May see what he’s done. He scrabbles around on the floor, dripping blood on the rug under his desk and onto his jeans, and he pulls a ragged old flannel out of a pile of dirty laundry, presses it to the wound. 

Dammit, dammit, dammit, he’s so _stupid._ What the hell was he thinking, doing this here, in his room, separated from May by just a wall? 

_That’s not the question,_ says the tiny voice that is not his, _the question is, why did you do it at all?_

It’s right. The voice is right. This is beyond the realm of experimentation. He was barely even thinking when he did it. He barely even noticed.

What is _wrong_ with him?

He tilts his head back, chokes back a sound, though whether it would have been a sob or a laugh he couldn’t say. It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay. It was stupid, but the cut is small. In a few minutes his healing will have taken care of it, and then he just has to wait until May falls asleep so he can sneak into the kitchen and clean himself up. He’s hidden much worse from her before. 

But when Peter looks back down, the shirt is already almost soaked through. When he lifts the shirt away from the cut, a fresh geyser of dark blood erupts from it.

“ _Shit_ ,” he says, pressing the shirt back down. 

Within a few seconds, blood is dripping through it. 

He’s starting to feel dizzy. He wishes he were more blood-phobic, because then he could say it’s the sight of it making him feel this way, but Peter knows better. It’s not the sight of blood; it’s the loss of it.

He needs help.

He doesn’t want to do it—God, he wants to do anything else—but Peter knows that between seeing him like this and finding him later, passed out or worse, there is no contest. He can’t do that to May. He’s crying now—can’t remember when he started, actually—but he swallows hard and walks to the door, trailing blood behind him, smearing it on the door and on the handle when he fumbles to open it one-handed.

The living room is dark. The lasagna is still on the counter, a crust forming on top. May’s bedroom door is closed, but there is a faint strip of light underneath, and quiet music within, and Peter approaches and raises the hand of his good arm, the fingertips of which are starting to go numb, and knocks. 

No answer.

His vision is slippery, shuddery. He can hear blood dripping onto the hardwood. He knocks harder. 

This time, the music shuts off, but that is the only sign she has heard him. Nauseous, Peter leans his forehead against her door, tries to listen for the sound of footsteps, but there are none. 

“May?” he says at last, softly. “May, are you there?”

A pause.

“I don’t think I want to talk to you right now, Peter.”

Peter’s chin starts to quiver. He sniffs. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry. I know I was a jerk, I just… need some help? Please?”

Another pause, but this time it is punctuated by the sound of May getting out of bed, then footsteps, and then the door opens just enough for May’s face to appear in the crack, and for a second she still looks angry, her eyes red and swollen, the corners of her mouth downturned, and she opens her mouth, maybe to tell him to go away once more, but then she sees the blood and she freezes.

Only for a second. Then she is gasping, flinging the door wide, arms already stretched out, reaching for the blood-soaked flannel. Peter lets her grab it, can sort of feel the pain when she presses down but it feels weirdly distant, like it’s happening right above his arm instead of in it.

“Oh my God, Peter, what happened?”

“It was an accident.”

“Jesus. Okay. Come—come here.”

Peter lets her guide him by the arm into the living room, where she pushes him down onto the couch. He’s hyperventilating, but it isn’t from blood loss. It’s from humiliation.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m sorry, I was working on the circuit board and the knife—it slipped. It slipped, and I tried to clean it up, I thought—but it’s not stopping. Usually it would stop by now—”

May grabs his free hand, the one that is sticky and red, and presses it to the flannel.

“Hold pressure,” she commands, “I’m getting the first aid kit. Keep holding it.”

Peter obeys, ducking his head and trying to take deep breaths while she rummages around in the cupboards behind him. She is back in a moment, prying his fingers away and piling gauze on top of the shirt, then pressing her thumbs into the gauze, hard enough that Peter finally feels a jolt of real pain, and he hisses. 

“How big is it?” May asks. “How bad?”

“It’s small. It’s really small, I’m sorry, I don’t know why it’s bleeding this badly.”

“If it’s small and it’s bleeding like this you might have nicked an artery.” May’s face is ghastly white and her glasses are slipping down her nose, but she doesn’t remove her hands from the gauze. “We need to call an ambulance.”

“ _No._ ” Peter almost jerks his arm out of her grip reflexively, but manages not to. Blood is seeping up through the gauze. “No, May, I can’t.”

“This isn’t a _debate,_ Peter! You’re not seriously arguing with me right now!”

“I’m not! I swear I’m not, but I’m serious, I can’t go to the hospital, what if—what if they—?”

May understands. She swears, piles more gauze on, holds it with one hand, reaches for her pocket with the other.

“I’m calling Tony.”

“No. No, please no. May, he already thinks I’m just some stupid kid, he’ll never let me _near_ my suit again if he thinks I can’t handle homework—”

“So I’m supposed to let you bleed to death on the couch? Jesus, Peter, what is _wrong_ with you?”

That’s it. That’s all he can handle. 

Peter starts to sob.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know, I don’t know what’s wrong with me I just—I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, please don’t make me go to Mr. Stark, please, it’s going to stop, I know it will, just—just—”

“Peter. Peter, stop. Take a breath. Take a breath, honey, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

“It’s my fault.” It’s the first time Peter has ever said the words out loud. If he wasn’t reeling from blood loss and shame, he wouldn’t have said them at all. “It’s my fault Ben is dead.”

May’s grip on his arm, already iron-tight, somehow tightens further. 

“Don’t say that,” she says.

But Peter nods, tears flying in all directions. 

“It is. It is my fault. You don’t understand. You don’t understand, I had my powers.”

“No.”

“Yes. I had my powers, May. I had my—and he stepped in front of me. If I had just—if it had been me—”

May reaches up and seizes Peter’s chin with one hand, the other still tight on his arm. Her grip is firm, almost painful. She forces him to look at her. 

“Five things,” she says. “Right now. Go.”

“I don’t—”

“I’m not asking. Do it.”

“Um…” A stuttering gasp. “Blood.”

“That’s one.”

“Your glasses. They’re slipping.”

“Two. Keep going.”

“The lasagna. We left it out. And—I can hear Mr. Edwards upstairs, he’s watching Dr. Phil.”

“One more.”

“My arm hurts.”

“Okay. Good. I’m sorry about your arm. Now I need you to hear something. Peter, look at me.”

He has scrunched his eyes shut, but he opens them at her command. She is staring right at him, still gripping his chin, face still pale, searching.

“You need to hear this,” she says, “and you need to believe me. Ben dying was not your fault.”

“But—”

“No. There is no but. There is no version of what happened that night that is in any way on you, Spider-Man or not. It is solely the fault of the man with the gun, do you read me?”

Peter doesn’t reply.

“I said, _do you read me?_ ”

“I—yes.”

“I need you to say it, Peter.”

“I—it wasn’t my fault.”

“It was _not_ your fault.”

She lets go of his chin. Peter lets it fall to his chest. He’s so, so tired all of a sudden, but he says quietly, “Please don’t call Mr. Stark.”

May returns her other hand to the gauze.

“One minute,” she says. “If it hasn’t stopped bleeding in one minute I’m calling him.”

“Okay.”

They lapse into silence. Peter can tell May is watching the clock on the wall. He is listening to it ticking, even though every part of him is starting to feel heavy, sleepy. _It’s really been a year_ , he thinks.

One whole year, bookended in blood. 

When one minute has passed, May peels her thumbs away from the gauze. There is a patch of red on the topmost pad, but only a small one.

“I think it’s stopping,” she says.

She still holds on a few more minutes, until the patch of red starts to turn sticky and clot. Then, slowly, she takes her thumbs away. When no fresh blood comes welling up, she throws her head back in relief. 

Peter is still crying. He’s exhausted. He couldn’t stop if he wanted to. 

May gets him a glass of water and an apple. He’s too nauseous for the fruit, but he drinks the water in slow, careful sips and then she sets the glass on the coffee table and resumes her seat on the couch beside him. 

“Come here,” she says.

Peter doesn’t feel like he deserves to be touched. Tears are still dripping steadily onto his knees. He’s cold. He shakes his head.

May doesn’t ask again. Instead she leans over and tugs him toward her, pulls him down so his head is in her lap, his left arm elevated, propped on his hip, and she starts to stroke his hair. 

“You’re okay,” she says. “It’s okay, you’re okay. I’m not mad, honey, I’m not mad. I’m sorry, okay? I messed up too.”

Finally, Peter relaxes into her touch. After a while, the tears subside. Not long after that, he is asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. I uh, don't really have a good explanation for myself or why I do the things I do. Which seems to be disappearing, mostly. I am, as ever, trying to be better.


End file.
